Biographies for Boyd County Kentucky

Kentucky Genealogy and History

Biographies for Boyd County Kentucky

Brown, Judge Geo.
Moore, Hon. Laban

Judge George N. Brown, of Catlettsburg, judge of the Sixteenth judicial district, was born September 22, 1822, on the site of Huntington, West Virginia; was educated at Marshall and Augusta Colleges, graduating at the latter; studied law, and admitted to the bar in 1844, locating at Pikeville, and soon building up a fine practice; was married in 1857 to Miss Maria J. Poage, who bore him four children. Judge Brown bears justly the reputation of being one of the ablest and purest jurists of the Kentucky circuits; but largely extended that reputation by the firmness and integrity in his conduct and rulings in the celebrated murder cases of Ellis, Neal and Craft. Only his resolute determination to enforce the law in the face of the wild and infuriated passions of the people, who were maddened to mob violence by the nature of the crimes committed, and a belief in the guilt of the accused, secured the partial administration of the legal processes and punishment. By a like stern courage and inflexible will, the Floyd and Magoffin county frauds on the public treasury were discovered and arrested, a service for which the auditor, in his report for 1883, said that Judge Brown deserved the thanks of the State. In 1873-73, he was one of the commissioners to expend seventy-five thousand dollars on the improvement of the Big Sandy.

[The History of Kentucky, 1886 - submitted by ©Shauna Williams]

Hon. Laban T. Moore, of Catlettsburg, has ever been a consistent advocate and promoter of common-school education. He was born January 13, 1829, in Wayne county, West Virginia, and mainly educated in the schools at Louisa, Kentucky, and Marietta, Ohio. He studied law under Rochester Beatty, and attended Transylvania Law College, under the instructions of Judges Robertson, Woolley, and Marshall, afterward reading with R. Apperson; licensed to practice in 1849. He next year married Sarah Everett, of Cabell county, West Virginia. For his advocacy of a normal college, in 1857, he was beaten for the Legislature. He was elected to Congress in 1859, and served during that exciting session. He recruited the Fourteenth Kentucky Federal regiment, of which he was colonel for a time. He was elected to the State Senate in 1881, and has mainly distinguished himself for his eminent and successful services in behalf of education, in that body. He was chairman of the committee to redraft and revise the common school law, and was most prominently the author of the present excellent law of Kentucky, a work of inestimable value to the future of the Commonwealth. Mr. Moore yet pursues successfully the practice of his profession.

[The History of Kentucky, 1886, submitted by Shauna Williams]